Conan the Conqueror
A third Conan film based on the Robert E. Howard Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon. Development Dino De Laurentiis made tentative steps towards a Conan III, commissioning a script from psychiatrist-turned-pulpwriter Karl Wagner, author of the 1979 pastiche Conan novel The Road Of Kings. The film was never realised, and the Cimmerian lay dormant for a decade. The protagonist was changed due to Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to reprise his role as Conan and Kevin Sorbo's reluctance to redo a character already played. It became Kull the Conqueror. THE FINAL ATTEMPT AT A THIRD CONAN FaM HIT THE BALL BACK TO MILIUSTHANKSTOANDY AND LARRY WACHOWSKI who, post-Matrix, had been given the keys to the Warner Bros, kingdom. Under the their auspices, Milius began writing King Conan: Crown Of Iron in 2001. Arnie wasn't averse to returning, cheerfully telling the press that Milius was busy cutting down a 180-page script. "He smokes a stogie," said Arnie, "then writes a page, and then smokes another stogie." King Conan's script was once again more about Milius than Howard, although it did begin with some business adapted from The Frost Giant's Daughter8 (Conan's earliest adventure, written in 1932 but not published in Howard's lifetime), and features a role for Bran Mak Morn, Howard's Pictish hero from an entirely different set of stories. The plot, in a nutshell too small for the job, spans 25 years and sees Conan, alone in the north, encountering the "daughter of the snows" who promises him a son if he brings her "the jewels of an empire". Conan heads west where he becomes a pirate, then a general in the Aquilonian army, and returns to the north with his new-pillaged wealth, to be presented with his son, Kon. Although Kon is not, it transpires, Conan's son after all, but the offspring of (get this) the 'Ice Worm'. Conan and Kon head south, only to be separated when Conan takes up the crown of Zingara, and Kon is dispatched to the Aquilonian Academy Of War. Kon rises in rank as he grows older, estranged from a lonely Conan, who is still pining for Valeria and dealing with treachery at court, until finally the pair are reunited, with Kon learning the bizarre truth about his parentage, and Conan learning the secret of the Crown Of Iron. And at the very end Milius promises even more, in "Beneath My Sandalled Feet, the final instalment of R. E. Howard's Conan"! Once again, events conspired against the project. Milius was scouting locations in Turkey, talking up new weaponry (namely the Aquilonian Spatha', which he described as a "Frazetta axe", after iconic Conan artist Frank Frazetta), and hinting that Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson might be in contention for the role of Kon. But Fredrik Malmberg, president and CO of Conan rights-holders Paradox and a producer on the film, explains that "during the period they were making The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (shot in 2002). it became clear that the Wachowskis had their hands full. It was turning into this behemoth." Feeling creatively burnt out in the aftermath of production, and stung by fan backlash against the two sequels, the Wachowskis began to make it known that "they were not really that eager to go into Conan, after all. They wanted to do a video-game or a smaller picture," When Troublemaker supremo Robert Rodriguez heard rumours that the brothers were vacillating, he offered to step in and take over the project, at which point the Wachowskis changed their minds once and for all and officially bowed out. And without Andy and Larry's patronage, Milius left shortly afterwards. A further three years passed with Rodriguez officially tied to the film and his own rewrite), but the clock was ticking on Warner Bros." option, and Rodriguez, who always has his fingers in multiple movie pies, was impossible to pin down. "Warners and Paradox would ask. 'Can we start now?'" says Malmberg, "and Rodriguez was always like, 'Yes, but I just have to do this first...' Finally, when we really pushed him for a start date, he admitted that he couldn't do it." See also * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kull_the_Conqueror Category:Conan Category:Unmade sequels retasked Category:Kull